Hypersonic Travel: Travel From London To New York In An Hour

Picture this: You hit the snooze button on your alarm one too many times and just woke up in your London flat. You look over and let out a scream because you just realized you have a business meeting in New York in an hour and a half!

No worries, Australian defense scientists and the U.S. Air Force are on it. They’re testing a hypersonic aircraft that travels at 5,840 km per hour, or around 3,629 mph for the anti-metric types. That would cut the travel time from New York to London down to under one hour.

The experimental aircraft that was tested in Australia crashed back to earth 10 minutes after launch. Scientists assure travellers that this was on purpose and they’ll do some more work to make sure that doesn’t happen when they start selling tickets.

Handshake does not fully encourage hypersonic rocket space flight with rapid re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere for the elderly, people under 5’1″, or expectant mothers. But feel free if your alarm doesn’t go off.

And just so we have options, scientists have also been hyping the potential for a trans-Atlantic train travel. This underwater tunnel might one day be another way of crossing the Atlantic in under an hour.